Top 18 Greatest Unbreakable World Records In Soccer (football)

Top 18 Greatest Unbreakable World Records In Soccer (football)

Every week, footballers do incredible things, and we then say exaggerated things like, “I’ve never seen anything like that before!” Let’s face it: it’s fun to talk about soccer and even more fun to exaggerate about soccer. But then there are the records, the things that really have never happened before, and those are just as fun. Here are the 18 world records in soccer you need to know about. Top 18 Greatest Unbreakable World Records In Soccer (football)

The 18 Greatest World Records In Soccer

1. Longest Goal Ever Scored

Surprisingly, many of these world records in soccer happened recently. We start with Asmir Begovich, riding the wind of fate into the net in 2013. Poor Artur Boruc and his weird neck tattoo never had a chance. The ball traveled 97.5 yards. It was the third kick of the game. It gave Stoke City the lead over Southampton.

That one narrowly beat out Tim Howard’s one-bouncer for Everton just a few weeks prior. Adam Bogdan’s had a rough career, hasn’t he? He’s like world soccer’s Brandon Knight.

2. Longest Headed Goal Ever Scored

Say it with me, science friends: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every action has an equal and opposite…

That’s what happens here, on a fluky play. With the keeper up to try for a late equalizer, Odds BK’s Jone Samuelsen redirected a blasted header in the opposite direction and bounced it into the net to secure the win in 2011. The header is measured at just over 58 meters (190 feet, 8.58 inches), and narrowly edged out this bit of dreadful goalkeeping for the title of “World’s Longest Goal Scored With Someone’s Dome.”

3. Most Red Cards Given In One Match

Oh, we like this one. In Argentina in 2011, referee Damian Rubino gave out THIRTY-SIX (36) red cards in a single match between Claypole and Victoriano Arenas. After a brawl erupted – where one fan even rushed the field, landed one sucker punch, and then ran for his goddamn life – Rubino sent off all 22 players and every substitute and some technical staff. The straight red card is one of the real wonders of sports, and this dude got to hand out thirty-six of them in a row? Stick him in the refereeing Hall of Fame. That’s where he belongs.

4. Most Expensive Player Transfer

Gareth Bale’s €118 million transfer fee from Tottenham to Real Madrid tops this list, which we predict will grow and grow and grow as television money goes even more bonkers and revenues continue to climb for the big clubs. For example, Manchester United just made £500 million in profit in a year for the first time in club history, and they aren’t even remotely, like, good at playing soccer.

Bale makes roughly €20 million per season in wages, which is about a million euros per goal scored. Keep getting them checks if they’ll give them to you, Garry.

5. Most Goals In A Calendar Year

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Obviously, this one belongs to Lionel Messi, who scored 91 mostly ridiculous goals in 2012 to surpass Gerd Müller’s record. He set the Barcelona club record for career goals that year; he scored five in a Champions League match (a record) against Bayer Leverkusen; he scored a particularly obnoxious hat trick against Brazil for goals 49, 50, and 51.

I’ve seen that video a dozen times, but tonight I could only make it to goal number seven before I burst into laughter tears. Every goal is a joyous experience.

7. Most Soccer Balls Juggled At The Same Time

In 2006 in a shopping mall in Stockholm, Victor Rubilar of Argentina managed to juggle five soccer balls (using his hands) at a time. More than eight years later, Dutchman Marko Vermeer matched the feat, presumably at a carnival or in the lobby of a movie theater or perhaps at an outdoor park on top of a picnic table.

The video below shows Rubilar pulling off the same stunt in 2009. Pretty cool.

8. Fastest Hat Trick

Sitting at the top of the list of all time fastest hat tricks is a recent hat-trick from the Sheffield Sunday League in England. The all-time record belongs to 20-year old sports science student and Rawson Spring forward Alex Torr, who shattered the record in an astonishing 70 seconds. Torr compelted his record performance within the first 12 minutes and ten seconds on Rawson’s Sheffield Sunday League versus Winn Gardens.

9. Most Consecutive Hat Tricks

Masashi Nakayama scored hat tricks in four consecutive games in 1998. Four in a row! He tallied 16 goals in those four games.

He was also the first Japanese player to ever score for his country in a World Cup that year. It was in a loss to Jamaica, but, eh, who cares. Nakayama was on fire in 1998.

10. Fastest Shot Ever Recorded

This one surprised us a bit, because we’ve seen John Arne Riise’s howitzer against Manchester United in 2001 and also Zlatan’s against Anderlecht in 2013.

But O.K.A.Y. Sporting Lisbon defender Ronny, we see you and now we understand your power. The shot, by the way, was measured at 221 kilometers per hour, which is more than 137 miles per hour. Get. Out. Of. The. Way.

11. Most Divisions Played In By One Player With One Team

Nathan Pond, now a 30-year-old, has played for Fleetwood Town in seven different flights of English soccer: English North West Counties League, Northern Premier League Division 1 North, Northern Premier League Premier Division, Conference North, Conference Premier, Football League 2 and Football League 1.

Fleetwood Town…more like Flightwood Town, am I right? Guys? Anyone?

12. Longest Unbeaten Run

Arsenal’s Unbeatens of 2003 and 2004 rattled off 49 consecutive unbeaten games, including all 38 games of the Premier League season in 2003. The run actually spanned three seasons – the last two games of the 2002-03 season through the first 10 games of the 2004-2005 season.

13. Most Goals By A Player In A Single World Cup

In 1958, Frenchman Just Fontaine scored 13 goals to lead his team to a third-place finish in Sweden. Fontaine scored a hat trick in the opening game, two more in a loss to Yugoslavia, and finished group play with a winning goal against Scotland. Then he scored two against Northern Ireland in the quarterfinals, and scored again in a 5-2 loss to Brazil in the semifinals.

Then, in the third-place game, he bagged four more to set a remarkable record. For perspective, Miroslav Klose is the career leader in World Cup goals, and he scored 16.

14. Fastest Sending-off In A World Cup Match

Not a record you necessarily want to have unless you’re throwing a match or something, but Uruguayan José Batista was sent off after less than a minute in a 1986 World Cup match against Scotland. In that Zapruder video, he clearly flies in late and two-footed and seems to have mortally wounded Scotland’s Gordon Strachan (judging by his reaction). In Strachan’s biography, published years later, he says he thinks Batista went in late to try to take him out of the game on purpose.

Massive bonus points to the referee for being absolutely infuriated and offended that Batista made that terrible tackle.

15. Longest Throw-In (Not In A Competitive Match)

At a girls’ football camp in 2010, Danish man Thomas Gronnemark tried six times to set this record by using the fan-favorite “flip” throw. On the seventh try, he got the angles right, didn’t break his body in half, and chucked it 51.33 meters (168 feet, 4.8 inches) to set the bar. We received no word about whether it was a legal throw.

16. Longest Game Ever Played

Bristol Academy and Leeds Badgers, two amateur sides in England, played a charity match for 36 consecutive hours in 2009. Each team had 18 players who played for 18 hours each. The game was played in memory of Jamie Burdett, who played for Leeds and died from meningitis in 2007. The teams raised more than £10,000 for the Meningitis Trust foundation.

Leeds won 285-255, and Leeds’s striker Adam McPhee scored 75 goals in his 18 hours of play. Not bad.

17. Most Goals Scored By A Goalkeeper In A Career

We’ve detailed this legend here at length at The18, but Sao Paolo goalkeeper Rogerio Ceni scored 128 goals in his career. The dude took a ton of penalties, sure, but he absolutely crafted in some free kicks, too, like the one above. Our favorite moment of that clip is the announcer saying “he hasn’t scored since August” like he was a slumping superstar striker, which he, uh, was?

18. Most People Blowing The Vuvuzela Simultaneously

Yeahhhhhhh, you got it, this absolutely makes the list. It happened in South Africa (but you guessed that, of course) in 2009, where 12,511 people simultaneously blew those plastic aneurysm horns. It was, as many records are, set on purpose before a Vodacom Challenge football tournament match. Even Guinness’s official write-up in the record book calls it an “event” that was “organized.” Top 18 Greatest Unbreakable World Records In Soccer (football)

But to still hate the vuvuzela is to miss the real beauty of its lasting legacy. Somewhere, stuffy sportswriters and soccer haters sit in bed at night, poke at their microwave ramen with a plastic fork, and hear that lovely, annoying, unique, buzzing sound in their ears before they drift off to restless sleep.